I've been using iWeb for over two years and I've published hundreds of pages of the magazine Web http://www.yesicannes.com. But I can not go on with iWeb, a great software to create sites but hampered by its limitations. I'm going to use Wordpress to build a dynamic site, that will of course have the same URL: www.yesicannes.com as the former one by iWeb.

My big concern is how to keep active the links to pages already published with iWeb (host OVH)? These links were broadcasted hundreds of times around the world ... I also intend to include them in the "summary" of the new site to direct visitors to the old iWeb version of the magazine.

If someone has successfully migrated from iWeb to WP could please be so kind as to share his (her) experience in hosting, I would be very grateful.

If you do wordpress, you'll have that installed on the root ("/") with your new pages, design and whatnot.

So your iweb site can remain where it is now, nothing changes excpet removing the index.html in the root directory because that automatically redirects to your iweb folder /yesicannes/ (iweb created this) as you would want the wordpress index.php file to take precedence in your root.

I now need to know how to stop the domain to point to the iWeb index.html and point to the new index.php WordPress hope page. In addition, I have to change host because the one I'm using has not a good reputation to work WP sites. What is the procedure to do these two changes ?

Could you please help me again on this matter ?

Many thanks again.

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Hi SrWebDeveloper,

Thank you very much for confirming Alphakline's views. That helps me a lot.

As far as the link I mentioned is concerned, I only need to put a link to the "old" iWeb magazine 2012 summary on the new WP summary page for visitors to see the old version. The link is by example: http://www.yesicannes.com/yesicannes/2012_summary.html
and the 2012 summary already bears a link to the 2011 summary.

I now need to know how to stop the domain to point to the iWeb index.html and point to the new index.php WordPress hope page. In addition, I have to change host because the one I'm using has not a good reputation to work WP sites. What is the procedure to do these two changes ?

If you look on your root directory for http://www.yesicannes.com/ you most likely have an index.html file there. That index file was created by iWeb and auto redirects the domain to the subfolder /yesicannes/ which is where all of your iweb pages and folders are kept.

If you open that index file in a text editor, you should see a meta tag within in. Should look something like this:

Code:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url= yesicannes/home.html" />

That tells the browser when landing on this page, index.html, which is in your domain, www.yesicannes.com, to automatically redirect to /yesicannes/home.html. So basically, if you delete that file there won't be a redirect. When you upload/install wordpress on your root, it comes with it's own index file so it will work fine and take over the main domain structure, but you still need to delete or edit the iweb index file name to something like index-iweb.html so that it doesn't load. Renaming it would allow you to keep it as a backup if wanted.

Many thanks again for your kind and much valuable help in the difficult (for me) matter of web hosting.

I've understood how to rename the index.html, but I have a last issue, if you had time: I know that moving one site from a web host to another is a very serious matter, involving a lot of errors if not done by the book.

So, what is the step-by-step procedure to change web host ? From OVH to Infomaniak, indeed.

Do I upload first the old iWeb site to Infomaniak ? How do I close the iWeb site at OVH ? (By renaming the index.html name ?) And how do I transfer the email account contact@yesicannes.com from OVH to Infomaniak ?And last but not least: I have no clue of DNS data management in the control panel...

I can manage to upload Wordpress to Infomaniak, but what is difficult for me to understand is how to transfer of the old iWeb site. So if you had the time to explain me how to do that, I would feel more relieved.

2) The new host will usually send you a temp URL so that you can access the FTP directory and their control panel.

3) Publish your iweb site to the new host exactly as it is on your first host. If you're using an FTP application, just download your current site to your desktop then upload it to your new host. Or republish it from iWeb with the new FTP settings.

4) Set up your email accounts with the same prefixes and passwords as your current ones on your new host. If you have your email setup on POP3, then you don't need to download your messages as you have already done that with your mail application. However, if you're viewing your mail with IMAP settings then you'll need to backup your entire mail inbox and folders to your computer then upload them back on your new host. There are alot of ways to do this. If you're using apple Mail, simply drag the inbox folder and your other mailbox folders to the "On my Mac" section in the Mail sidebar. It will copy all of your emails. Then just drag the mail back when you're on your new host.

5) When you have the emails and site files on the second host ready, go to where you registered your domain and change the DNS Nameserver to point to the new server. The register may be your first host. Of course can also transfer the domain to your new host as well.

6) This part takes anywhere from 24-48 hours to complete as the transfer has to go through all the ISP's and servers.

7) To check to see if your website is loading from the new host, I usually do something different to the HTML on one of the pages such as adding a "." before the closing </body> tag or throwing up a txt file that I can navigate too. This way if the text file loads in the browser or I see my "." on the bottom of my page then I know the site is pulling up on the new host. Also check to see if your email is working.

8) Finally, once you know your site is working fine on the new host, you can delete the files on your first host and delete your account.

Please be so kind as to excuse me for my late reply. I've been changing Internet provider as well, and during the time the new line was under construction, I've been without Internet access.

Well thank you very much for the precious informations you've provided me with. That will be very helpful! I've signed up with the new web host company today, when my Internet connexion was alive again, and I'll follow your instructions.